


Continue On—The Goodbye Job

by crayonbreakygal



Series: The Where in the World Is Nate Ford Series [5]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Anger, Closure, Drama, Gen, is he lying?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:41:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28952874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crayonbreakygal/pseuds/crayonbreakygal
Summary: They don't believe what they see.
Series: The Where in the World Is Nate Ford Series [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1741693
Kudos: 4





	Continue On—The Goodbye Job

**Author's Note:**

> Hmm. Well, that took a turn that I wasn't expecting. Read and enjoy!

Continue On—The Goodbye Job

Takes place eight years after season five.

The four of them looked so young. They all stopped, defiant looks in their eyes. Most days, it would have been him at the back, watching, waiting, judging, planning. That was not how the team operated now. He’s glad it wasn’t. It’s not his team anymore.

Eliot stood at the front, ready for anything. The hair was shorter, but the scowl was the same except the frown line in the middle of his forehead was deeper. Maybe it was just the light. Maybe it was because of the situation he was in at the moment, what he was listening to.

Hardison stood tall, ready to back the team up. Has he learned how to throw a punch? Probably. Where before he was all grins, awkwardness, and muscle, now he holds himself proud and possibly a bit more muscle too. He didn’t look awkward at all. He looked like a self-assured man instead of the geeky boy of yesteryear.

Parker was in front too, where before she would slink around, bouncing here and there, hanging if there was something to hang on, poking if there was something to poke. That child-like curiosity had been tempered, the twinkle in her eyes had turned to sharp blades of determination. He knew she was going to grow into the position of team leader. She just needed the chance to fly, literally and figuratively. 

Oh, new guy. Harry something or another. Lawyer? It didn’t matter. He was playing their game now. Well, not his game anymore. He had handed it over and walked away.

And the person that he had walked away with eight years before was standing at the back, in his position. Whereas the others looked a bit perplexed (Parker), furious (Eliot), and possibly raging (Hardison), she looked serene. It was all an act. She was going to kick his ass from here to Sunday if she could. 

“I know this was not what you wanted,” he started. 

“What the hell?” he heard Hardison exclaim.

“But I knew if I came back…”

He watched Eliot’s fist clench at his side.

“The four of you. You’re a team. My team. My family. If you’re watching this, you know. It’s time. It was time.”

He saw Hardison hold his breath, jaw clenched in anger. Parker’s stance to anyone else wouldn’t mean much. To him, it meant that she could bolt at a moment’s notice and never look back. Eliot’s head slightly nodded back and forth, rejecting what he was hearing on the screen in front of him.

“You son of a bitch.”

Ah, there it is. That’s his girl. Underneath that cool exterior raged an inferno that was just about to blow.

Harry looked back and forth between all the reactions of his new team. Poor guy, Nate thought. 

“I am so sor…” The video kept playing, the word being drowned out by Sophie yelling. He had even paused just a bit because he knew she would lose it.

“Don’t you dare say you’re sorry. Don’t you dare. That was not the deal. Do you understand? I came here to help them. And you do this? Why?”

He hadn’t told Sophie, hadn’t even given her the least bit to go on when she got on that plane to help the other three. This was the only way. Her speech to them, telling them that he was out, that he wanted nothing to do with them anymore had been his version of a “goodbye” so that they wouldn’t guess what was really happening.

“Take care of them, Eliot. I know that you will. You promised.”

“Til my dyin’ day,” Eliot choked out.

“This is, this is not happening,” Hardison spat out.

He watched as Sophie picked up a bottle of something. Damn, a nice bottle of Scotch. Taking it in her hand, she rushed forward to slam it into the screen. Only Harry stopped her just before it connected.

While Hardison and Eliot rallied around Sophie, trying to convince her that violence wasn’t the answer, that yes, they did need that huge monitor that Hardison had just set up and that no, they really did not want to clean up the remains of said monitor if she was going to do what they thought she was going to do.

Parker closed her eyes, breathing in deep and slow.

“He lied. That son of a bitch lied to me. No one grifts me and gets away with it. I can’t even tell him. I can’t.”

Sophie trailed off, sobs escaping. Maybe this wasn’t the best way to play this, but it was the only way. She never would have gone, leaving him. She would have waited and waited and never…

“He’s lying,” Parker said.

“You just…,” Hardison tried to say.

“Parker, he just said that this was his last message,” Eliot declared as he held Sophie close.

“Yeah, well. It’s a con if I ever heard one. Besides if he is dead, he’s probably haunting us right now.”

“What?” Harry exclaimed.

“He once said that if we didn’t continue with this crusade that he’d come back and haunt our asses. Or something like that.”

Nate did not remember telling Hardison that. Now he was just making shit up.

Parker raised her head, looking around the room. She winked, she winked directly… dammit. This was not going according to plan. She then smiled and turned her head back to the group. 

“So, let’s go steal a… Nate.”

“If he isn’t dead, he will be shortly,” Sophie deadpanned.

“I want front row seats,” Eliot declared as he pushed his hair back out of his eyes.

“I’ll make the popcorn.”

“Ok, the guy just declared that he’s dead. What makes you think that he’s still alive? I mean, that was pretty convincing,” Harry put out there.

“He once convinced Sterling that we were all dead.”

“I worked with him on his performance. He had them all convinced that he had gotten his whole crew killed.”

“Do you know how creepy that was?” Parker said as she walked to the door.

Opening it, she ushered the rest of them out, closing the door quietly behind her.

His plan was a bust. The dying part wasn’t a bust because yeah, he kinda was dead. They would keep looking for him, thinking that he was alive somewhere. And he would haunt them, watching their every move and make sure if he could that they survived whatever was coming their way.

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by the first photo of the cast of Leverage 2.0 that includes the new character Harry. It's a reaction shot with Parker and Eliot in the front, Hardison and Harry (I think I got new guy's name correct?) next and Sophie at the back. Something has got to be causing them to act this way. I seriously was not going to kill him off. But I did.


End file.
